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A supernatural horror novella

BYSTANDERS

Benjamin Percy

They should
have helped.

Five college students record a brutal attack on their professor. When they replay the footage, each sees a different horror: their own death.

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The playback

That isn’t
what they filmed.

The attack is over. The footage has changed.

Gathered in a bar after a museum visit turns violent, the students reach for their phones. The recordings they made are gone. In their place are visions of their own deaths.

Each video is different. Each feels impossibly real. And watching it again changes nothing.

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Nowhere feels safe

A familiar city.
An unfamiliar fear.

A late-night train. A campus gym. The quiet aisles of a library. Knowing how they might die turns every ordinary place into a threat.

As the horror spreads, the students search for an explanation—and for someone willing to help them.

The question is no longer what they saw.
It’s what they’re prepared to do.

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Bystanders · Benjamin Percy

For film and television

After a group of college students film a horrific tragedy instead of intervening, their phone videos begin showing visions of their own deaths; as the supernatural contagion spreads from screen to screen, they must escape the prophecies—and seek the help they refused their professor.

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For film and television

The horror of
standing by.

  • A recognizable impulse. A terrible consequence.The reflex to record someone else’s suffering becomes the basis of a supernatural curse.
  • Death foretold.Personalized visions give each character a fate to resist—and turn everyday surroundings into sources of suspense.
  • A young ensemble under pressure.Five students with different beliefs and instincts confront the gap between who they think they are and how they actually behave.
  • Old horror, new screens.A disturbing art exhibition, corrupted recordings and a city full of witnesses connect an older evil to contemporary life.
  • Benjamin Percy.From the novelist and comics writer whose work includes The Sky Vault, Wolverine and Deadpool Wolverine.
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The novella

Read
the book.

Social horror. Supernatural dread.
The true cost of looking on.

Benjamin Percy turns the distance between a screen and the world into something terrifyingly small.

Read the book
Bystanders by Benjamin Percy. Cover by Sonny & Biddy: a skull containing a hand holding a phone, in yellow, blue and red.
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About the author

Benjamin
Percy

Benjamin Percy is the author of novels including The Sky Vault, story collections, and Thrill Me, his widely taught book of essays on writing.

His work spans fiction, comics and audio drama, with credits including Wolverine, Deadpool Wolverine and the “Predator vs” series. His honors include a Whiting Award, an NEA Fellowship, the Plimpton Prize, two Pushcart Prizes and the iHeartRadio Award for Best Scripted Podcast.

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